A Big Crash

Ah, how vulnerable we choose to make ourselves with our silly dependencies!  As I noted yesterday on Accidental Dharma, I stopped off for breakfast at Denny's after leaving my Prius at the Toyota service department, blithely assuming that Denny's would have wireless connection.  Well, apparently they did.  I saw it there on my laptop and was trying to access it when the whole thing crashed.  

With remarkable equanimity, I got on with my sausage and eggs (and a well-toasted English muffin), picked up the Prius and drove back home.  Still nothing.  An hour's delightful conversation with Apple Care, at the end of which my despairing advisor suggested reloading Leopard.  I started the process.  Four hours later, it was still "installing," with two minutes to go.  It had been registering two minutes for the past two hours.  Another call, this time to a "product specialist"--I think that was the term.  Another hour or so later, he suggested radical surgery: the hard drive would need to be wiped clean, and everything on it lost.  

Well, okay.  I'm fortunate enough to have my desktop, where most of my work is stored.  No big deal.  I'd have to transfer a lot of stuff, but it would not be the end of the world.   And, well, I did succeed in erasing everything.  But things have not returned to normal.  This morning, the laptop was indulging in other strange behaviors--and not the ones I wanted it to.  In a word, I try not to use too often, but which seems appropriate here, I think it's truly fucked.

Perhaps the reason I'm not tearing out my hair is that I do have the alternative.  But I like to think, too, that I have learned something in my ten plus years on the meditation cushion.  A few short years ago, the word I resorted to at the end of the last paragraph would have been mild compared with the language coming out of my mouth.  Now it's just, Right Speech, Equanimity, Impermanence...  Sweetness and Light.  See?  There's something about these Buddhist teachings that does actually work.